


Invictus

by spanglecap



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gladiator AU, Historical Inaccuracy, Violence, gladiator nat, probably, romans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:33:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7833979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spanglecap/pseuds/spanglecap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha Romanoff wasn't meant to be captured. She wasn't supposed to end up fighting in the Arena. And she certainly wasn't supposed to catch the emperor's attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Invictus

**Author's Note:**

> Invictus - the Latin word for “unconquerable” or “undefeated”

Heat.

It scorched her skin, barbed licks searing what felt like every inch of her.

Water. She needed water. Or better yet, mead. Her throat was too dry, scratchy and coarse every time she swallowed. The back of her head still throbbed dimly from where she’d been hit, and her shoulder was sore. Curled on her side, the jolt of the carriage she suspected she lay in was jarring and unpleasant on the uneven ground.

Natasha blinked her eyes open slowly, dazzled by the high sun overhead. Her body ached as she shifted her legs and tried to push herself upright with a grimace, quickly realising that her hands were bound together with thick rope. Then, hushed voices around her.

“Is she-”

“-She’s alive, look!”

Instinctively, Natasha tried to reach for the sword on her side. Her fingers grasp nothing but air, not that she could have properly reached it anyway with her hands bound like this. The knife in her boot? She twisted her leg to see. Also missing. The-

“-They took all your weapons,” the first voice said.

Of course they had. She’d already managed to take out seven of them before one had gotten a lucky shot, striking the back of her head with a sword pommel. Taking her weapons would have been the first thing they’d done.

They’d come at night. Natasha had been a wanderer for most of her life, and the town she was staying in for the night before passing through the next day was small and full of families. Farmers. Elderly. Only a handful of fighters. They’d never stood a chance.

“Quiet, they’ll hear us,” the sterner voice commanded in a hushed tone.

Natasha focused on the owners of the voices, squinting through the sun. Opposite were three women, two of them young in years with olive skin and skittish eyes. The third had perhaps seen more winters than the two girls, a few wisps of grey in her hair. She must belong to the sterner voice, and possibly a relative of the girls. Maybe a mother or an aunt. Maybe not.

“Where are we?” Natasha asked, careful to keep her voice low.

“South,” the bolder of the two girls replied quickly. The other still hadn’t spoken, eyes fixed firmly on Natasha. “We think we’re being taken past the borders.”

“You’ve been unconscious for nearly two days,” the eldest told her. “We thought you might have died.”

“It’ll take a lot more than a knock on the head to do that,” Natasha replied dryly. The older woman smiled to herself as if in approval, looking Natasha up and down but not saying anything further.

A gruff shout from the front of the carriage quickly silenced the women. Natasha took the chance to properly take in her situation, now her head wasn’t throbbing quite as much. The carriage – or cage, more aptly – was sturdy and wooden, robust. There seemed to be several more carriages travelling behind them, each flanked by armed, mean looking men. Definitely not soldiers by the look of them, but clearly not civilian. Probably mercenaries.

Getting out wasn’t going to be easy, especially in the current situation.

But she would find a way. She’d have to wait, bide her time. Hope that somehow an opportunity would present itself before they reached their destination. She was under no illusion that wherever they were headed, a warm hearth and feather beds would not be waiting for them.

  

* * *

 

Two days of travelling turned into two weeks, and Natasha had grown restless and irritated. Unfortunately, the men who had captured her had been almost irrationally cautious around her and opportunities to escape were few. Clearly she’d made an impression on them.

Three failed attempts had only left her with more bruises and less food than she’d had before, and she could feel her strength starting to waver. They’d even taken her cell mates away to another carriage to leave her in isolation. But still, she was determined. Nobody could hold Natasha Romanoff for long. She’d grown up in the frozen North, an icy wasteland few could withstand. Her small tribe had been brutal and violent, with their leader rewarding only the strongest.

So she had made _sure_ she was the strongest.

“Look!” she heard Anya, the youngest girl exclaim from the carriage in front of hers. “A city!”

Natasha lifts her head at that, straightening up and craning her neck against the wooden bars.

She saw it, gleaming on the horizon, splendid and vast even from this distance. The biggest city she’d ever laid eyes on. Several roads seemed to snake over the lush green hills, sloping together towards the city.

For a moment, she panicked. She’d been hoping to escape long before they reached her captors’ intended destination. But then, perhaps this could be better. Big towns meant crowds. Lots of people to hide amongst and slip away. She looked at the city again, judging roughly that they would arrive well before sundown. She could fight her way past the guards when they opened her cage and slip away into the crowds.

Just a few more hours, and she’d be free.

 

* * *

 

Rome.

Every other city Natasha had ever seen seemed to pale against its splendour. At first, anyway.

Natasha had heard the name from her captors a handful of times on the road, and she had often wondered what kind of place it was. She knew Rome itself was a powerful empire, its borders stretching most of the known world from Germania to Britain and even to parts of Persia and Egypt. But as a city, Natasha could never have imagined such a place in her wildest dreams.

Building upon building and dozens of streets weaving into each other, filled with bustling markets and traders. Sights and smells from what felt like all corners of the world packed each stall, from food to cloth and jewels to weapons. Natasha’s stomach growled fiercely as they passed a baker’s. Music and chatter from the townspeople filtered through the streets. Soldiers seemed to patrol the alleys in pairs or fours. Statues and symbols of their gods were carved into the buildings themselves and put on pedestals, brightly coloured and gilded, gleaming in the sunlight. A bird call from up high caught Natasha’s attention. Looking further into the distance, the buildings Natasha saw only seemed to get grander and more elaborate. Temples and palaces and senate halls, all decorated as brightly as their gods and held up by almost too many pillars to count. The sight was designed to be imposing, to show strength. Their leader, their Emperor most likely lived in the biggest palace, surrounding himself with wicked, wizened politicians and ruling from afar.

But slowly the sights changed.

The markets soon turned into slums, the streets uncared for and filthy. Beggars curled themselves up in coves and alleys. The exotic smells of spices and linen which had been pleasant were now stenches of putrid decay and human waste. She watched as a young child with dirt on his face swiftly stole a small pouch of coins from an elderly lady with a walking cane, unnoticed by her, and she wondered what kind of Emperor let himself live in such luxury while many of his people lived in such poverty.

But then, she reasoned, her chief hadn’t been much better either, hoarding everything for himself. He had been a liar and a manipulator and few had shared in his wealth. It had been one of the reasons why she had turned from her tribe in the first place. It felt like so long ago she could barely remember who she was back then.

Natasha noticed they seemed to be approaching a throng of people, and a lively one at that. They gathered around a small wooden step, where a man clad in nothing but chains was showcased to the crowd. A slaver’s auction. Was this to be her fate?

“Not likely,” she muttered to herself. Not while there was still breath in her body. Natasha was _done_ belonging to someone, _done_ being a slave to others’ whims. Never again.

But to her surprise the carriages passed the auction without stopping. Confused, she looked back, as if to make sure that they were still moving away. The reason became clear a few minutes later when they approached a house with peeling paint on the walls and a flickering bronze lamp in the window. A woman with heavy black kohl on her eyelids and elaborate curls atop her head waited for them by the door.

A whorehouse, then.

Natasha didn’t like that idea either.

The carriages pulled to a stop and her captors started opening up the cages, grabbing the womens’ arms and yanking them out. The leader of their party was speaking with the woman from the brothel as she passed him a rather heavy-looking leather pouch. Probably coin for their services.

Natasha’s heart twisted as she watched the three women who she’d first shared her small cell with hauled towards the brothel. Anya was crying, scared, clinging to her sister Alena. Their aunt Dejana’s expression was firm and resolute, but their eyes met and Natasha knew she it was just a front, that she was being brave for the girls.

But logically, there was nothing she could do for them now. If she tried to take them with her in escape, she would end up having to protect them against the guards and most likely end up in the brothel herself, or worse, imprisoned or dead. No. It was best that she slip away by herself now, and find a way to get them out later. She could only hope the brothels clientele would be kind to them.

A hand on the lock of her cage brought her attention back to her immediate problem – the men standing between her and escape. A few of them would have to be grappled with before she could get far, but she could steal a weapon easily enough and slip away into the crowd as planned.

Natasha readied herself. The lock started to ease open in the man’s hand. She leant back on her haunches. And –

“-Stop,” another voice said. Natasha looked at the other man sharply.

“Is she not for the madam?” the first man asked, pausing. Natasha had learnt their language from a prisoner their tribe had had once, and hearing snippets of their conversations during the last couple of weeks had helped too. The second man shook his head with a sinister smile, walking up to the bars and crooking his finger through the bars at her as if teasing a feral beast. Mocking her. Natasha scowled at him. She remembered breaking his nose in her second attempt to escape. The bruises were only just starting to fade. Suddenly the look in his eyes made her regret making it personal with him.

 “That one’s too much trouble,” he said, locking the cage again. The other man took a step back. “Send her to the pits.”

“The pits?” He sounded confused. So was she, if she was honest. What pits? “It’s not done, she’s a woman.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll never make it to the arena,” he said joyfully. “They’ll eat her alive.”

  

* * *

 

The next thing Natasha knew, she was jolted awake as she hit the floor.

She groaned, a dull, nauseous pounding in the back of her head. She heard a heavy door shut, iron scraping against iron as the bolt was drawn across it. They’d probably knocked her out through the bars, and her hands were bound together at the wrists again. Shit. She hoped this wasn’t going to become a regular occurrence.

“You lost, princess?” Natasha raised her head at the gruff voice. “How’d a pretty thing like you end up in here?”

The voice belonged to a man. A very big man, broad-chested and well-built with dark hair and a mean smile. Natasha had fought big men before. She glanced around. The room she was in was dimly lit and dusty, but she could make out several other figures stood a few paces back. There were several small windows on either side of the room but the light didn’t travel very far.

Slowly, she got to her feet.

“You think I’m pretty?” she asked, keeping eye contact with the man. Fine. Let him think she was some poor, innocent, lost girl who couldn’t defend herself. Let him learn the hard way. The man laughed, glancing to a few of his comrades at the side.

“Yeah,” he smirked, closing the distance between them. A couple of his friend took a few paces forward too. “Wanna see how pretty I think you are?”

No. No she did not.

All it took was one sharp jab to the throat that he never saw coming and he was on the ground, wheezing and gasping for air. His friends suddenly didn’t look so confident.

“Anyone else want to try?”

Some grumbles and muttered words from the men, but none taking the opportunity. Apparently seeing a man knocked to the ground by a woman who wasn’t even tall enough to reach his shoulders was enough of a deterrent. But then, a small chuckle from the other side of the room. Now her eyes had adjusted to the darkness a little, Natasha could see another man who hadn’t stepped forward before. Tall, and beautiful, but with kind, brown eyes.

“You want me to knock you down too?” she asked, expecting another challenge. The man laughed again, a deep rumble.

“Don’t worry, I will not touch you,” he replied. “I know not to cross a woman.” He nodded towards the man on the floor, only just catching his breath. “He has yet to learn that lesson.”

Natasha kept quiet, the man’s words still not trustworthy enough to her. He motioned at her hands and cautiously, she raised them. A small flick of his wrist and her bonds were cut with a razor-like motion.

“My name is T’Challa,” the man said. “I don’t think anyone else will bother you.”

“Natasha,” she said after a pause, still deciding whether the man was trustworthy. At least he seemed to be better than the first, and he had freed her hands. “Would you like to tell me what this place is, T’Challa?”

“I don’t know what you did to end up here, Natasha,” he said pensively. “I can tell you are not from these lands.”

Natasha waited for him to elaborate.

“ _Ave, Imperator, morituri te salutant,"_ T'Challa recited. _Those who are about to die salute you._

"What does that mean?" Natasha asked, confused.

"I do not know if such a thing exists where you are from. But here they are called gladiator pits.”

Suddenly the pieces fell into place. All the men here, they were clearly fighters but they did not look unified like soldiers did. Weren't from any single place, all different skin tones and hair colours and features. As she watched them settle back into whatever they were doing before she had been thrown into their laps, she noticed they did not talk like comrades, did not share like friends.

And Natasha wondered what the hell she had been thrown into.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes so I don't quite know what this is or how long it will be. It was just one of those plot bunnies that wouldn't go away and I have tried writing in a different style, so any feedback will be much appreciated!! :) It's also the first time I have written an AU so be gentle with me sweet child  
> I was also thinking of putting together a photoset inspired by this for a clearer visual of the world I am trying to create at some point, I'll put it up on tumblr when it's done!


End file.
